Foundations

Foundations

8ooo BCE - 6oo BCE

Start of Hominid

8001 BCE

Emerged in southern and east Africa around 3 - 4 million years ago.
At this time Sapiens Sapiens is thought to have begun the move out of Africa @ 72,000 BCE
1. Australopithecus
2. Homo erectus
3.Homo habilis
4.Homo sapiens

New Stone Age

Agriculture

Domestication

8000 BCE

First signs of farming and domestication of wild plants such as squash on the tropical coast of Ecuador and rice along the marshy banks of the Yangtze in China.

First to be tamed was the dog.

The first signs of sophisticated and domesticated plants and animals being dispersed into new areas of the Fertile Crescent. This included the range of founder crops, and the introduction into Cyprus of the domesticated Mesopotamian fallow deer, with sheep, goats and cattle.

Humans had settled in all but the most inhospitable parts of the globe.

New Stone Age (Neolithic)

8000 BCE - 4500 BCE

Lived in natural dwellings.
The start of fire.
The first weapons: rocks, clubs.
Built Tools.

Social:
Based on kinship group which survived off of hunting and foraging.
Often practiced nomadism. Didn't have a complex class structure.
Start of gender inequality.

Religion:
Enjoyed rich artistic and religious life.
Believed in animism or totemism, everything in the natural.
Shamans are religious leaders.

The two best-known examples of the remains of Neolithictowns are at Jericho and Çatal Hüyük. Jericho, on the west bank of the JordanRiver, was a walled town with mud-brick structures and dates back to 8000B.C.E.